Fortino Ventures has led Light Frame’s oversubscribed $5.1 million seed round, backing the ex-Alpian team rebuilding private banking’s core systems.
Following a successful $1.7 million pre-seed in May 2024, Rogue Venture Partners, New Stack Ventures and StudioAlpha Capital are returning for this next round alongside Fortino Ventures and new investors Tenity, AltaIR Capital, Sidekick Partners and Chamaeleon. They’re backing a team that has already proven its mettle in the sector, with co-founder and CEO Schuyler Weiss behind Switzerland’s first cloud-native private bank, Alpian, where Light Frame co-founder and president, Mathieu Clément, served as COO and CIO.
“Schuyler and the team have run a regulated Swiss bank on the kind of infrastructure they are now replacing,” investment manager Hugh Phelan motivates Fortino Ventures’ investment.
During their time with Alpian, Schuyler and Mathieu witnessed the limits of legacy banking software firsthand. “We searched for a core system that could carry a modern private bank, but it didn’t exist,” Schuyler recalls, describing the system Alpian used at the time as expensive, slow to change or implement, and never quite what they asked for.
“Current technologies within the financial services industry are generations behind the modern standard, restraining banks in their capacity to innovate and drive efficiency,” Mathieu explains.
That’s what led them to Light Frame…
Schuyler stepped down from Alpian in September 2023, and in January 2024, he founded Light Frame as a Swiss-American company, headquartered in Providence with an office in Lausanne. Along with Mathieu, Chief Engineer Philippe Kernevez and Head of Operations Gregory Bataille completed the founding team, which, according to the company, has also implemented and run core banking and portfolio management systems at JPMorgan and REYL.
The pre-seed round came a few months later, co-led by ATX Venture Partners and New Stack Ventures, with Rogue Venture Partners, Half Court Ventures, Underdog Labs and StudioAlpha Capital also participating.
At FinovateEurope 2025, Schuyler and Mathieu demoed what was then called the Oaken core banking system, or “the world's first cloud-native, API-first, AI-enabled Core Banking System designed specifically for private banks”. In June 2025, they teamed up with cloud core banking provider Mambu, which counts more than 260 live customers in 65 countries, on an integrated core banking package for private banking and wealth management. And that September, former Julius Baer CEO Philipp Rickenbacher (who also advises StudioAlpha Capital) joined Light Frame's advisory board.
“AI is redefining what technology can deliver, but the realisation of its potential in the wealth industry is dependent on the underlying infrastructure," Schuyler says. “The architecture must be designed around this future, without compromising the security, resilience and trust fundamental to banking.”
Why investors are joining the journey:
Hugh agrees, revealing that Fortino Ventures was so convinced after their very first conversation with Schuyler that they booked the earliest flight they could to Switzerland to meet him and the team in person.
“It was clear he was onto something big,” Hugh adds. “Few founders in wealth technology have lived the problem this closely, and fewer still have the technical depth to solve it. For a bank, moving sensitive data and live operations onto a new platform is an act of trust, and this team has earned the right to ask for it.”
Returning investor StudioAlpha Capital makes a similar point: in a regulated market, it argues, the business model is not the main advantage; live client operations, secure interoperability and governance are – which Light Frame has.
For this reason, Fortino Ventures managing partner Filip Van Innis also places the deal within the firm's thesis: “We strongly believe in deep vertical tech solutions. Some more AI native than others.” Private banking and wealth management software “might not be ready for the latest AI model yet (for some good reasons), but is ready for disruption”, he suggests.
Hugh and Filip worked on the deal with partners Wouter Goossens and Patrick Hermann, investment managers Luisa Buche and Louise Vluymans, as well as investor Jasper Rosenthal.
Building the foundation for the future!
Light Frame will use the funding to develop its platform, expand its implementation and client-delivery capacity and grow commercially, starting in EMEA. Hiring will focus on sales and go-to-market, with further investment in security, resilience and capability.
"With growing institutional adoption and live client operations, this financing strengthens our ability to further advance our product and accelerate our expansion," Schuyler shares on LinkedIn.
"In Fortino and our broader investor group, we have found partners who share our ambition to build that foundation for the next generation of wealth management," he concludes.
Read also: Fortino Ventures takes part in two funding rounds
